Archive for September 22nd, 2009

With all the smoke and mirrors in the media about reforming health care maybe its time to take a new look or think out of our usual health care box. It turns out that there is a lot that ordinary folks can do to prevent or preempt diseases from ever getting started. This goes double for folks as we get older, because of the special issues that affect senior health. We can choose our lifestyle so that we head in a direction with a high probability of attaining greater health or in an opposite direction with an equal probability of coming down with one of the big three diseases. The big three killer diseases are in order diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Four straight forward lifestyle changes can reduce the probability of contracting one of the big three by 80%. These lifestyle changes will not raise your health insurance premiums, but in some cases may actually lower them.

The big four lifestyle changes are within the reach of most folks, but they do require serious commitment. They are not monumental challenges like trying to climb Mt. Everest and return safely. The alternatives for not embracing these changes are higher health insurance premiums for everyone, seriously degraded quality of life and early death. The big four lifestyle changes include eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly, maintaining a healthy weight, and not smoking. As one motivation coach put it, “Where attention goes, energy flows, and the result shows”. This is something that we can do for ourselves and our country, because a healthy people make a country healthy and prosperous.